Minor
changes to campaign finance disclosure
practices in Utah caused the state’s
overall grade to slip from a D- to an F
in 2004, and its uniformly low category
grades demonstrate there is significant
room for improvement in all areas of Utah’s
disclosure system.
Utah
law does not require candidates to file
campaign finance reports in non-election
years, but does require two reports to
be filed before each election. Candidates
must disclose detailed information about
contributors who give $50 or more, not
including occupation and employer. All
expenditures must be reported, but subvendor
information is not required. The
state does require independent expenditure
disclosure, but neither last-minute independent
expenditures nor last-minute contributions
are reported prior to the election. Utah’s
electronic filing program is well developed,
but the state still received an F because
e-filing is voluntary, rather than mandatory,
for all statewide and legislative candidates.
There
are still significant weaknesses in Utah
in the area of accessibility of campaign
finance records, most notably the absence
of a searchable database of expenditures
on the State Elections Office web site. Also contributing to the
state’s D- in Disclosure Content
Accessibility is the inability to search
records by contribution amount and date,
or by contributor zip code. Adding
the option to download data, giving site
visitors a way to browse complete campaign
filings rather than just lists of contributions
and expenditures, and equipping the searchable
database with “smart search” capability,
are all things the disclosure agency can
do to advance access to campaign data in
Utah.
Utah’s grade for Online Contextual
and Technical Usability is still in the
D range and its rank in this category fell
slightly in 2004. The disclosure web site
features comprehensive information about
Utah’s disclosure requirements, but
does not include contribution limits. Terminology
could be improved, and the State Elections
Office could work with the State of Utah
technology department to make it easier
to locate the disclosure web site from
the main state homepage. The most
important usability resource still missing
from the site is a simple list of all candidates
and the amounts raised and spent by each. This
information would greatly enhance the public’s
ability to put individual candidate fundraising
totals in the larger context of what is
typical of all candidates in a particular
contest.
